


Limes

by ALC_Punk



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-02
Updated: 2009-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:24:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after the night before. (Happy Endings was a very long time ago)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limes

**Author's Note:**

> I've been listening to the first season of Benny audios (finished Birthright tonight), and so I don't know a hell of a lot about the later canon, but I remember ~~sort of~~ enough of Virgin NA canon to sort of hack it. ~~jesus god, 1996.~~

Bernice Summerfield drifted awake rather like a large barge that had gotten stuck on a reef might after a lot of tug boats and ropes had been applied. Her mouth tasted unspeakably awful and she was fairly certain that something had crawled into her throat and died while she'd been towed to shore.

A groan of complaint escaped her as her bedmate shifted and made a clicking noise followed by a sort of sliding sound. That someone else was there didn't really surprise her, but the person being _awake_ and mobile at least annoyed her.

"Do you mind?" she managed, after a couple of false starts and a cough. Her voice didn't make it far past the pillow her face was buried in, though she couldn't be bothered to attempt the question again. Not when her mouth was gummy and her head beginning to ache.

"Not at all," replied the woman next to her. It wasn't the voice Benny had been expecting, though, and that caused her to startle a little (a movement she regretted almost immediately). 

Ace. Ace, and a large bottle of tequila suddenly loomed large in Benny's memories. Tequila, limes, and.... But there, she couldn't quite remember what had happened next. Oh, her body was beginning to remind her--sort of pleasantly, sort of not-so-pleasantly. 

"Limes." She mumbled into her pillow. 

When there was no answer from Ace, only more clicking noises, Benny added, "Bugger off."

The noises didn't stop. "Are you always like this? In the mornings, I mean. I'd just like to be sure the nights are worth it."

Nights? Benny wasn't so sure she wanted to put herself up to more nights like this. The memories were beginning to rather painfully unveil themselves inside her brain. After the tequila had come jokes and... limes. And lime juice applied places she'd never considered before. 

"Are you mocking my technique? Because if you are--" bluff for all you're worth, someone had once told her. She surged out of the pillow with more groans and difficulty than she'd expected, and rolled onto her side to issue a rather blistering glare.

Ace was cleaning her pistol, the pieces spread over the sheet and duvet, each piece shining eerily in the rainy light coming through the window. 

"Try not to get oil on my sheets," Benny said stiffly.

Eyebrows shooting up, Ace glanced at her, "I don't think you'd notice. When's the last time you had these laundered?"

"Bugger off," suggested Benny, flopping back down and yanking the pillow over her head. Maybe if she wished Ace away, she'd simply go.

The part of the evening relevant to her long-term survival was beginning to surface again. Ace had suggested they form a partnership. Or something like that, it was wreathed in salt and lime juice and Ace's mouth being utterly distracting. Not that Benny had minded the distraction. It wasn't as though she'd been laid recently, aside from Jason turning up for his annual tonsil check-up and con-job, and as far as she was concerned, ex-husbands didn't count.

"What are you doing?" Ace asked, though she didn't really sound as if she were curious. There were more clicks as she began fitting pieces of her back together.

"Pretending you'll be gone when I wake up again."

"Has that ever worked before?"

Once or twice, though Benny wasn't willing to really remember those--there were bits of her diary with post-its on those days. "There was tequila," she mumbled, as though it were a defense.

"And sex," Ace chirped in amusement. "Effective method of distraction, I must say."

"Must you?"

Ace chuckled and slid down, gun back in one piece and on the night-stand. Her hand snaked under the pillow, pushing it up so she could kiss Benny's cheek, "I wasn't complaining about your technique."

The rush of hormones and adrenaline that surged through Benny made her stomach clench and roil, "Crap," she mumbled, scrambling up. 

She made it out of the bed and onto the ground, but the room tilted a bit, refusing to remain steady as she lurched towards the toilet. "I can make it," Benny informed the air, as though that would convince the universe.

Too much tequila had taken its toll on her body. As she escaped into the other room, her stomach starting to convulse, Benny was certain she could hear Ace laughing at her.

-

Some time later, Benny was sprawled on her bed, a wet cloth over her eyes. Ace was moving around, tidying or something (Benny didn't plan on removing the cloth until her now un-wanted guest had gone away). 

"You know," Ace said, her voice muffled by whatever she was doing, "You still haven't given me a serious answer."

"Maybe I would if I thought your offer was in the least bit practical--" shoving up on one elbow, Benny gestured, "I'm just a bloody professor, I'm not some mercenary for hire--"

Ok, that was probably the wrong thing to say, but she didn't really care. The cloth slipped down a bit, and Ace was looking at her, mostly amused.

"But you do know how to survive."

"Sheer luck." Benny quibbled, dropping backwards and dramatically covering her eyes again, "Just ask Wolsey."

"Is that what it is, cat? Luck? Or is she just one of those people who's got the knack?"

Wolsey, the traitor, purred at Ace as she stroked him.

"It's chance, happenstance, blind, dumb, abominable--" Benny was sitting up, gesticulating rather dramatically, she thought, "pointless, useless--"

Ace looked up from her crouch, hand still stroking Wolsey, "Are you done?"

"Ok, yeah." 

"--because you don't have to say yes right now. I've got time."

"And that's another thing--I hate motorcycles."

"But you do have a time ring."

Point. Regretting the tequila, as well as the coffee she'd had just after the incident in the toilet, Bernice Summerfield gave a sigh, "All right. Fine. So I have a time ring. But it doesn't work without the other. It's just one-half--"

Ace knew that, of course. Ace had _been there_ when she'd gotten it, and Ace was probably just making her admit it for a cheap laugh.

Turning on her side, Benny glared a little, "You can adjust it, can't you."

"I never said that," an enigmatic smile crossed Ace's lips, though, and she stood. "But I could just go. Take my tequila and ideas, leave you teaching for the rest of your natural life."

Benny flopped face-down on the sheet, and heaved a sigh. "I hate being shot at."

"Are you expecting to be?"

Lifting her head, Benny glared, "I've known you for long enough to expect it, yes. And getting blown up," she added, wondering if she could afford to lose her eyebrows again.

Ace gave a little shrug and came to the bed, sitting next to her. "Have you made a decision?"

"Do you have more tequila?"

Really, the answer to both questions shouldn't have included Ace snickering, which caused a shoving match, a pillow fight, and then (after some food and more coffee, and a particularly complicated explanation of Ace's being there to the porter who managed to look not the least interested or surprised) a completely sober roll in the sack.

But it was mostly satisfying, and Benny wasn't going to complain when she woke the next morning to find Ace gone.

She'd be back.

She always was.


End file.
